Sleep mechanism linked to near-death experience

April 19, 2006|SHANKAR VEDANTAM The Washington Post

As many as 10 percent of survivors of heart attacks report having a near-death experience -- such as feelings of transcendence, being surrounded by light or floating outside their bodies. New research announced this week suggests a biological explanation for such phenomena: People with near-death experiences are more likely to have different sleep-wake mechanisms in their brains. In a study comparing 55 people with near-death experiences with 55 people who had no such experiences, neurologist Kevin Nelson of the University of Kentucky found that people who reported such experiences also were more likely to report a phenomenon known as "REM intrusion," where things normally experienced during sleep carry over into wakefulness. REM is an acronym for rapid eye movement, one of the phases of sleep. Such people wake up but still feel paralyzed or hear sounds that others do not. As the vestiges of sleep fall away, those experiences disappear. It is not considered a disorder, but merely a variant of the brain's sleep-wake cycle.